Fifteen years after "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary, Al Gore speaks about climate change

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The fight against climate change, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which are helping warm the planet, came roaring back in 2021. The new data shows they rose 6.2% as the economy rebounded after the pandemic lockdowns, fueled by a rise in coal-generated power and pollution from trucking. Former Vice President, that's Al Gore, welcomed us to his Tennessee farm. He's been warning about the climate emergency for decades. This is a passion of his. You might expect him to be discouraged about the world's lack of significant action on climate change, but in a wide-ranging interview, Ben Tracy found he's actually quite hopeful. [00:00:40] Speaker 2: How big is the farm? This farm is 400 acres. Okay. You got a lot of land. [00:00:46] Speaker 3: Former Vice President Al Gore took us for a ride in his electric ATV. Those are mulberry trees. To show us his farm where he's been living, [00:00:55] Speaker 2: since the pandemic hit. I bet most people don't think of you as Farmer Al. [00:01:00] Speaker 4: No. I don't think so. And truth to tell, I don't have many calluses on my hands either. [00:01:06] Speaker 3: Great. His team handles most of the farm work, tending to the sheep and raising the animals that help fertilize the land, where they're growing everything from carrots and beets to a variety of greens, all sent to local markets. But this land outside Nashville is also Gore's climate change laboratory. [00:01:28] Speaker 4: And then just push it in. [00:01:30] Speaker 3: He's collecting a soil sample as he experiments with what's known as regenerative farming. [00:01:36] Speaker 4: That means cut back on the plowing. There are better ways to plant. [00:01:40] Speaker 3: There's actually three times more carbon stored in the topsoil of the earth than all the trees and plants combined. By plowing less and making that soil more fertile, scientists say farmers could help trap massive amounts of additional planet warming carbon emissions in the ground. [00:01:56] Speaker 4: Job number one is to stop using the sky as an open sewer for all of this man-made global warming pollution. And that's what's making the weather crazy and dangerous, leading to all of the consequences that are on the TV news almost every night now. [00:02:12] Speaker 3: He says mother nature is now making the most effective argument for climate action, and he's encouraged by the rapid growth of solar and wind power and people buying electric vehicles in record numbers. But the planet is still rapidly warming as we continue to pump near record amounts of pollution into the sky, leading scientists to declare a code red for humanity. [00:02:35] Speaker 2: There's all this progress being made, but is it enough? [00:02:38] Speaker 4: A realist will tell you, look, we've done some damage. Some of it, regrettably, is not recoverable, but we go from where we are. You want to avoid tipping people into despair, because some people go from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about it. It is as if we can throw a switch and save the future of our civilization. [00:03:05] Speaker 3: After attending the recent climate conference in Scotland, he says 2022 is the year world leaders need to stop talking and actually start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. [00:03:15] Speaker 4: Some of the pledges are still weak, and we need to measure what they're doing, and we need to keep an eye on them. It's amazing how precise this is. [00:03:24] Speaker 3: Gore is a major investor in a new tech platform called Climate Trace. It uses satellites, sensors, and artificial intelligence to track greenhouse gas emissions around the globe, from specific power plants and factories. This is the Middletown Steelworks in Butler County, Ohio. To individual cargo ships and even forests, which release all of their stored carbon when they burn. Gore believes this will be an important tool to hold countries accountable for their pollution. [00:03:52] Speaker 2: What do you do with that data? [00:03:54] Speaker 4: Publish it. We're not the climate cops. We're maybe the neighborhood watch, but our neighborhood is the whole world. We're in constant communication with the scientific community. [00:04:08] Speaker 3: Al Gore has been sounding the climate alarm for more than four decades, first as a young congressman. [00:04:13] Speaker 4: The Arctic is experiencing faster melting. [00:04:17] Speaker 3: And then, 15 years ago, with his planetary PowerPoint in the film An Inconvenient Truth. It earned him an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and plenty of scorn from climate change deniers. [00:04:30] Speaker 2: Some people called you a kook for being too far left on the environmental stuff. In a kind of unfortunate way, do you feel like what you have been saying all along has been validated? [00:04:40] Speaker 4: Well, I certainly wish I had been wrong. And more to the point, what I've been saying is really just channeling what the scientific community has been saying. At the top of the film, you say, I've been trying to tell the story for a long time. [00:04:54] Speaker 2: And I feel as if I failed to get the message across. Do you now feel like you've succeeded in getting the message across? [00:05:01] Speaker 4: No, I have not succeeded yet. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we're deploying the solutions. There is a remaining question about whether we will solve it in time. [00:05:14] Speaker 3: He's still optimistic, mainly because of young people all over the world now demanding change. [00:05:20] Speaker 2: A lot of those young people seem pretty fed up with politicians. Yeah, blah, blah, blah, as Greta says. Exactly. I'm with her. [00:05:28] Speaker 3: We're sick and tired of it, and we're going to make the change. Greta Thunberg and her fellow climate activists accuse world leaders of not doing nearly enough. And this former politician doesn't want them to tone down their criticism. [00:05:42] Speaker 4: I want them to, in the words of Spinal Tap, I want them to turn it up to an 11. Feed to the fire. Absolutely. And the more they can march, the more noise they can make, the more demands they insist upon, the faster progress we'll make. I'm a firm believer in that. I call this a farmer-led movement. [00:06:01] Speaker 3: And he still believes the climate crisis we created is one we can also solve. [00:06:06] Speaker 4: The direction of travel is clear, and I do believe that we will get there. [00:06:12] Speaker 3: For CBS Mornings, Ben Tracy, Carthage, Tennessee. [00:06:17] Speaker 1: Boy, thank you, Mr. Al Gore. It makes me want to go back, guys, and look at Inconvenient Truth again. Because when I first saw it, I was kind of like, yeah, okay. Really? Yeah, I was. I actually was. But now I think I'll see it with different eyes. And the fact that he is still speaking about it all these years later, and that really mostly everything that he says makes sense and has been true. It was good to see him in this light, this way. [00:06:42] Speaker 5: And what he said in response to what he does with the findings, he said, we're not climate cops. Maybe Neighborhood Watch for the world. We all feel like that. You don't need to have a badge and walk around and say, I'm cleaning up the litter on the ground. But if we feel like we're the Neighborhood Watch for this world that we live in, we can make it a better place. But we don't talk about it. We don't get into it nearly enough. The way he communicates is really evocative. Calling the sky an open sewer gets to the point pretty quickly. [00:07:07] Speaker 1: How about the line, Code Red for Humanity? I think we all need to pay attention. [00:07:11] Speaker 5: and we still have a chance to fix it. [00:07:12] Speaker 1: - Nice job Ben Tracy.